Body Impolitic

Monthly Archives: October 2011

Usually I come to blog discussions somewhere in the middle, but I’m going to write about one that I saw unfold. (And now it’s almost a week later, so a year later in internet time.) This story “starts” with Jill at I Blame the Patriarchy (who is responding to a remark made by one of her readers about what people think of her). For those who don’t know the blog, I Blame the Patriarchy is one of the great bastions of “radical feminism,” and Jill and her co-blogger Twisty are kick-ass writers. (I put “radical feminism” in quotes because I believe there are lots of ways to be a radical feminist, and this is one of them.) I often don’t agree with them, and I almost never agree with them 100%, but I keep the blog on my reading list and I’m seriously glad that their voices are out there.

Today’s feminist, empowered by all those articles on vibrators in Bust magazine, chooses choices of her own free will. These choices mirror her own unique sartorial, sexual, and philosophical personality. That these unique choices happen to align precisely with standard male porn fantasies, and that they are therefore rewarded with positive attention, is purely coincidental.Such a viewpoint is a luxury of youth. It is the great tragedy of the women’s liberation movement that fully-realized feminist consciousness is too rarely achieved by women who are still young and fit enough to take on Dude Nation in a knife fight. Too often, it’s only when a woman ages out of pornosity, and is too old to do anything but take pictures of cows, that she discovers what the world really thinks of her.

Towards the end of the post, Jill states the “radical feminist” position in no uncertain terms.

It would be many years before I would understand that femininity, the practice of femininity, and the fetishization of femininity degrades all women. That femininity is not a “choice” when the alternative is derision, ridicule, workplace sanctions, or ostracization. That femininity is a set of degrading behaviors that communicates one’s level of commitment to male authority and women’s oppression. That femininity is coerced appeasement, regardless of how successfully it is now marketed to young women as feminism.

Holly at the Pervocracy had a response (which is the only one I didn’t read in the normal course of my blog reading, but it was picked up by Clarisse at Feministe, and I did read this one. Here’s Holly:

Most critics of sex-positive feminism have not bothered to figure out what sex-positivity is. It’s not the giggling, hair-twirling exclamation of “it’s feminist to be sexayyy!” It’s really not. I’m not going to defend that strawman. (I also think it’s funny how often I get accused of being a Hooters-girl-bot, when I’m about the least Hooters-looking-person ever.) Nor is it the demand that everyone be sexy or have sex. Nor is it the claim that everything that involves sex is beyond criticism. Nor is it the suggestion that sex will fix all the problems of feminism.
Instead, sex-positivity is the belief that sex and sexiness are… okay. It’s the belief that people shouldn’t be judged by the sex they have. It’s the belief that consent matters and social norms do not. It’s the belief that porn and erotica are valid media of expression (not that the current porn industry is hunky-dory, cause it’s not) and that sex work ought to be just work (not that it currently is). It’s the belief that neither “slut” nor “prude” should be an insult. It’s the belief that every sexual and gender identity is valid.
Sex-positivity is, in a nutshell, the belief in sexual freedom as a key component of women’s freedom and of having a better world in general.

A lot of criticism of sex-positive feminism is really criticism of sexy women.

Clarisse at Feministe picked up Holly’s post and ran with it without analyzing it. Clarisse is smart and sharp, and is trying to make some level of peace by talking about how much she respects Twisty and radical feminism, while quoting Holly at length (and not quoting Twisty or Jill, which is interesting in itself).

At Alas, A Blog, Mandolin comes in to talk about the relationship between sex-positivity and fatphobia:

… a lot of the sex-positive stuff I’ve read has been pretty deeply entangled with fatphobia, even the stuff that’s not trying to be. Which, lots of stuff is, so it’s not like I think sex-positive feminists are more fatphobic than other people or even other feminist activists (probably less as a whole!), but sexuality and body issues are really at a–I’m going to say it, “problematic” :-P –crux so…

Well, at heart, I guess, I think some of the assumptions of sex positivity run counter to my experience as an unattractive woman. I’ve tried to pornulate, my goodness. And I’m not trying to say here “I’ve tried to be sexy” or “I’ve tried to be feminine.” Because I am feminine! And I wasn’t trying to be sexy, I was trying to be “sexy,” to be the ideal pornulated female. (And the fact that I never could is one of the big pains of my life since it eventually drove me away from my chosen career.)

Mandolin has a later post on the same subject with some nuanced and thoughtful comments about performed femininity, which I recommend that you read.

So here we have three women I respect (plus Holly, whose writing I don’t know), all making “blind woman and the elephant” responses to a very deep social problem. Jill sees sex-positive feminism as inherently degrading. Holly and Clarisse see it as a woman’s right. Mandolin sees it as something she’s cut out from by her body shape.

But …

As Lori Selke helped me figure out, none of them are really talking about sex-positive feminism. They’re talking about performed femininity, about women making choices that make them/us more conventionally attractive to men, and specifically to men who are at least as acculturated as women to defining certain shapes, sizes, and accessories as “sexy.”

Sex-positive feminism is not historically heterosexual. It is not only possible to live a passionately and unmistakably sex-positive life without ever touching a man, plenty of people do it. Plenty more travel in the world where “gender is not binary” signs are posted at every turn, where at least half the people they/we meet and hang out with and go to erotic readings with and go to sex parties with are not simply categorizable as either male or female.

Holly’s sentence (quoted above) that criticism of sex-positive feminism is often criticism of sexy women completely sidesteps this issue, because she is effectively defining “sexy women” as women who are conventionally sexy in the heterosexual culture, and who make use of the trappings of performed femininity, from high heels to make-up.

Jill, unaware or unexamined femininity is coerced appeasement. With awareness, it can become a combination of coerced appeasement, theatricality, and turning the horrible hand women are dealt into something we can actually play with.

Holly and Clarisse, sex-positivity is in the body of the person who feels it. It’s not in the eye of the beholder. Don’t make the mistake of conflating how people see us with who we are or what we like.

[NOTE: From here in, this post is edited to add a distinction between personal and political sex-positivity.]

Mandolin, I get it that your body keeps you from pornulating but, as you say, you are feminine. And Your own sexuality is about what works for you in your bedroom (or your car, or the beach, or the elevator) and whoever you wish to share it with. It’s not about how other people see you. whether or not you are sex-positive is, to me, a matter concerning what you believe and what range of behaviors you want other people to be comfortable (and joyful) engaging in. Regardless of how we look on a continuum of socially recognized sexiness, sex-positivity is about what we think people should have the freedom to enjoy without social restriction. Sex positivity is the extension of that to other people: it cannot effectively be conflated with anyone’s idea of sexiness in other people, because it isn’t about how other people see anyone.

One of the best things about the sex-positive circle I travel in is the vast range of bodies I see at events–everyone at a Perverts Put Out! reading is there because they/we self-identify as sex-positive. Someone can have their own opinions about whether or not I am sexy, or feminine, or womanly, but any opinion they might have about whether or not I am sex-positive is useless, because the only person with any say in that particular issue is me.

Believers in a Judeo-Christian god must, by definition, believe that the world was designed by that god as (s)he wished it to be. The Latin phrase is “Deus Vult,” translated literally as “God wills it.” In this context, let’s
contrast a popular (although far from universal) Christian view of sexuality with what’s known about the animal kingdom:

Any evil condemned in Scripture cannot be honoring to God. Homosexual religious leaders attempt to smooth over the breaks and rough places with Christian terminology so that a euphoria predominates, but God is not in it. A truly born again person, who loves and understands the Bible as God’s revelation to him, will not condone an evil that God condemns. “If ye know that He is righteous, ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is born of Him” (I John 2:29). “Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are His. And, let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity” (II Timothy 2:19). Practicing homosexuals are engaged in a divinely forbidden evil.

So did God forget giraffes? Or decide it’s okay if your neck is ten feet long? (Hmm, is there a phallus joke there?) Or is the problem with Lehman Strauss?

And then there’s adultery, a Judeo-Christian sin so basic that it’s singled out in the Ten Commandments:

At Christians.org, we find:

Why should people refrain from adultery? Because God said so! And he said so for several obvious reasons. First of all, adultery adulterates. Sex is essentially pure. It is part of the creation that God pronounced good. But precisely because it is pure, it must be protected from adulteration. We need God’s pure sex law for the same reason we need pure food and drug laws. The laws protect us from contaminants that would destroy our health and happiness. The Bible is not against sex. To the contrary, it values sex enough to rescue it from adulteration.

And here’s Roxy Drew again:

Roxy Drew has a point: human sex is boring compared to so much of the wild and crazy sex of the animal and plant kingdoms. Who knows? Maybe some of our wilder efforts are an attempt to catch up to the “lesser beings.” And maybe Deus Vult.

Thanks to Annalee Newitz at io9 for the pointer to the delightful Roxy Drew.